"He's safe?" Eliana asks in a tone and position that makes her seem uncaring, but considering the contents of her questions for the last ten minutes, she is anything but uncaring.
"Like I said many times already, he was safe the moment he landed in my care, your healers did an admirable job keeping him alive before that, but only his own body could truly flush out that much disease. It simply needed a stabilizing factor." Esstrey responds lazily, while reading a book on voodoo magic.
The many operations were a success, Sofia helped keep Jake stable while Esstrey was using the blood of the volunteers to act as a blood bank. The body of the boy did an admirable job flushing the disease out, while Esstrey manually controlled cells in places to prevent the diseases from dealing too much damage. The volunteers were incredibly surprised on still being alive, silly humans thinking they would ever die on Esstrey's operating table, she could have just killed them anytime before that.
Jake himself was kept under anesthetic for as much as possible, the boy had too much energy for someone infected with... [Miscolousis]... whatever the hell that is. All Esstrey really needed to know was what the disease's methods of spreading through the body were, and if the body could deal with it if given time. There were a few diseases that would eventually coalesce into parasitic lifeforms too large to deal for the body to deal with, a fascinating study on magical parasites if Esstrey had anything to say about it. Said diseases are now stored safely on her request, hidden away somewhere for later study, somewhere where Esstrey doesn't even know where it is.
Wouldn't do if these suffered unfortunate accidents now, would it? Speaking of unfortunate accidents...
"While I did say your healers stabilized him, he will worsen once they get their hands on him again, the various illnesses he had should never have gotten as far as they did. Someone was encouraging their growth, something that only life mages are capable of, with the care he was getting. He can probably be discharged from my care, as my job is done. Keep him away from the healers, and he should be fine." While Esstrey says she's no longer needed, she noticeably doesn't get up to leave, and she seems rather engrossed in the book about voodoo magic.
Eliana doesn't spare Esstrey a glance, simply looking at her child like she's looking at the monument to all her sins. Her eldest son had almost died because of her failure to keep assassins at bay, Malencia has some of the best counter-intelligence operations, and there were certainly ways to fix her child without resorting to the aid of a witch, but those methods are... worse. Even with those already being in her employ. Rowan and Kharn are good retainers, but their skills are decidedly conventional. Rowan is a master tactician, and knows how to avoid the ire of other nobles, while Kharn's skills are precisely where an assassin would have theirs, but the witch has shown a consistent way to deal with problems in an unconventional manner... perhaps...
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"There has been a minor incident, it's rather unconventional, and I was wondering if you could deal with this matter... for additional pay." Esstrey turns another page on hearing the offer of the duchess, while looking slightly annoyed.
"I'll need more information than that." Her tone is abrupt, and if it was any other commoner, it would be downright insulting, but she's also the person who saved her son's life with it only costing gold. Her posture turns grave, and she properly faces Esstrey.
"Right, you will meet them regardless, so I don't see why not. This duchy didn't stay great because of teaparties and some clever political maneuvering, it's because we host the biggest black market in the Faerune Kingdom, on top of some... less savory figures. It turns out that when you give crime a place to go, and tax them for it, you don't only get a lot of tax income, but also significant oversight over what said criminals are doing. One of my more ambitious ancestors applied this on a greater scale... with cults." Eliana watches the mermaid carefully to gauge her reactions, but she stays stubbornly unresponsive.
"Of said cults, only one of the three that are currently active could really be called a cult, it would be more appropriate to call them cliques. One is effectively a collection of mages with more ambition than sanity who seek power through contact with the Infernal Host. Another is a proper cult of eldritch worshipers calling themselves the Beyonders, there have been many purges of these cliques, but the Beyonders ones managed to avoid getting purged since the start. Lastly there is a group of necromancers, they are the most recent addition, and tend to keep to themselves." Still checking the mermaid for reaction, she got exactly what she wanted, while getting nothing at all. There were slight twitches in the eyebrows and her fingers at the mentioning of the names of the groups, meaning that she has at least some experience with their sort... all of them.
"The incident they caused has to do with my son, after his condition deteriorated they were tasked with finding a way to cure him. Each of them had a way on how my son could be saved, the Infernal Host offered to make him a demon, the necromancer wanted to turn him into a lich, and all I remember about the Beyonder cultists is... something similliar, their magics can get a little finicky like that. All the way mentioned are of course highly illegal, and came with ways to hide Jake's condition, but forcing him into a body like that could easily spell disaster down the line. The Infernal Host and the Beyonders had a disagreement on what would have been the better outcome, and attempted to enact testing on some... test subjects without approval, something like this was normally overlooked... if the Beyonders didn't sabotage the already poor security measures of the mages which resulted in more deaths. I would like you to enact a fitting punishment on both of these cliques which don't fear death." Killing the ones responsible was easy of course, but practically never worked against the cults. It barely even worked on regular criminals.
"That's great and all, but I was more thinking information along the lines of stuff found in a library or something, I haven't been in a proper settlement in forever." Esstrey would say the last proper settlement she was in was in Russia, as all these places look like medieval backwater villages to her, but that wouldn't be very conductive to negotiations. And maybe the mermaid enclave was the last proper settlement, native mermaid architecture had a very appealing look.
Eliana simply sighs, she barely knows the woman, but already has the feeling that letting her talk about the most important state secrets uninterrupted is rather typical of her.